Fear & Prayer

A long post...but here it goes

Fear

Since Jonathan got his CIs over a year ago I have had this fear of coming into contact with someone who is deaf (without CIs). CIs are amazing and sometimes it is still hard for me to believe that my son is deaf, but yet he 'hears.' While we are extremely happy with the decision that we made to get CIs for Jonathan, they are not always looked upon favorably. They are in some cases controversial. The opinion of some is that it is denying who he is (that he is deaf). We have even received a few comments on Jonathan's videos (on youtube) that were extremely negative, saying that we do not have the right to interfere and the decision is not ours, rather it should Jonathan's to make (when he is grown and old enough to decide on his own). Given that, I have had a fear of confrontation with anyone who is deaf.

During VBS this past week, two of the sweet girls that we had in our class both had deaf mothers. I was excited and really wanted to communicate with the mom, but I intentionally avoided her...fearing confrontation. On Thursday, I quickly walked right past her pushing Jonathan in his stroller. I waved at her daughter and her friend and just kept going as the mom watched Jonathan. The next day when the mom was picking up the girls, she got my attention. I smiled and walked over, feeling my face turn bright red and getting butterflies in my stomach.

Once we started talking, I was so relieved. She asked about Jonathan, asked if he was deaf, if he was born deaf and told me that she thought it was great that he had CIs (some paraphrasing). I realized that it was silly to be afraid.

While in church on Sunday, the message focused on fear. The guest speaker (can't remember his name) read of verse after verse telling us, do not be afraid, do not fear. God was there for me....and drilled it into my thick skull afterwards :)

Prayer

While driving home Saturday evening, we headed straight into an awful thunderstorm. The clouds were black and the lightning was so close. Mark and I watched the skies fearing a tornado would drop down any second because the winds were just going in every direction. While we drove down the beltway, the wind blew our tahoe around and blew the rain across the road that it sort of swept up in a wave, curling back up the side of the concrete divider. With white knuckles and closed eyes, I prayed quietly...so as to not make Jenny scared. The rain turned a bit and we were going with it. I still had white knuckles, but my eyes were open now. Then Jenny said, 'you want to know a secret mommy? I was praying for us to get home safely." We did get home safely and sat in the car for about 10 minutes before making a run for it.

With lots of candles and flashlights, Jenny asked if we could pray again. As I kneeled down next to her, she corrected me. She told me that I needed to bow down to pray. She got down on her knees and folded her hands and bowed down all the way to the floor. Nothing like a sweet 5 year old teaching mom to just get face down on the floor and pray, give it all to God :)